This hot new DVD documents Mike Portnoy's innovative drum stylings in the highly acclaimed fusion/progressive metal music of Dream Theater and Liquid Tension Experiment. Disc 1 features music from both CDs by Liquid Tension Experiment and includes footage shot at Millbrook Studios where both were recorded. Mike performs 8 songs/segments and breaks down parts from each, explaining how to develop a "toolbox" of fills and patterns to draw from. Drum lessons are featured throughout along with exclusive footage of the making of the first LTE album, as well as rare live footage of the band. Disc 2 focuses on the music of Dream Theater and features footage shot at Beartracks Studios. Mike performs 11 songs/segments from the Falling into Infinity and Scenes from a Memory CDs and isolates the drum parts from each song. He discusses playing in odd time signatures, developing double bass technique, soloing, and much more. Includes exclusive live footage of Dream Theater from their 1998 World Tour. Special DVD features include 2 bonus live performances - 1 by Dream Theater and 1 by Liquid Tension Experiment! Over 20 minutes of new footage! Also features extensive commentary by Mike, a camera switching option that allows the viewer to "direct" 4 studio performances by Mike, a photo gallery, and more! Approximately 190 minutes.

It has been awhile since I have watched it all the way through, but have found myself still referencing material from the DVD. Good aspects: excellent instruction on odd time signatures - very important for drummers to know, slows down his fills so you can actually see what he is doing (watching him live, sometimes it's hard to tell a lot of what he is doing, b/c it is so fast) On this DVD, he really opens a new door to fills and hand/foot patterns, which I use regularly. He slows them down and brings them back up to speed-nicely breaking down the music. Great for drummers who want to also be musicians.Bad: there was a long boring jam session with Tony Levin playing a goofy bass...should've been clips, not the whole thing. Definitely must be very experienced to begin with to take anything away from this. But, in all you can learn something from anything and minus the babbling and lame expressions, it is a very informative DVD. I honestly would have a hard time with odd time today, even after 14 years of playing and Mike cleared it up nicely and made it easy to understand and play, solidly. He is one of my greatest influences as a drummer.

This is by far one of the greatest DVD's i have ever owned. It is very insructive and teaches you some of Dream theater's and Liquid Tension Experiment's music. I recommend this to ANY type of drummer.

His toolbox of fills is really helpful and cool. He is very good at playing in different time signatures and explaining them. His is so innovative and also a very cool guy, I would very much like to meet him. It is very interesting to hear about his setup. Some of the things he says are very silly, like when he mentions "cymbal land". He is a very good drummer and a cool guy. This DVD is very fun and helpful to watch.

Dissapointing piece. He shows a lot of stuff that he does through liquid Tension and Dream Theater, but teaches very little, and that little is somewhat insignificant. He spends most of the time talking about how great something he did is. The live footage is cool. Him teaching his own material. . is useless unless you can't figure anything out and therefore shouldn't be playing dream theater.

Within the 190 minutes of running time, Mike instructs several elements of drums/percussion. He deeply expresses the role of drums within a song or solo. Overall, this video is educationally helpful but lacks a certain structure.